Families and health professionals remember with pain and anger the lack of oxygen in Manaus

Remembering the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021, when the health system in Amazonas collapsed for the second time, reactivates pains that retired lawyer and judge Francisco Balieiro believes will never be overcome.

His expectation was to turn the page on the consequences of the first wave of Covid in his life: he spent four days hospitalized in April 2020, lost his brother, sister-in-law and friends in the same period and lived with the consequences of the disease all year.

“I already had unhealed wounds. And the second wave took our family in a brutal and violent way”, he says.

The 27-year-old daughter was infected and between admission and death was just five days. Baleiro buried her on December 21, 2020. “She had no comorbidity. She was chubby, but she had no health problems because she was chubby.”

On January 5, 2021, he lost a nephew and, on the 8th, an uncle to Covid. A week later, on January 12, another brother passed away from the coronavirus.

“In those days there were already complaints of lack of oxygen in Manaus”, he recalls.

The rush and anxiety continued. On the same day, the lawyer’s mother showed symptoms. The family went through eleven hospital units trying to get care.

“There was no public or private vacancy. Where there was a vacancy, there was no oxygen”, he recalls.

The elderly woman’s Covid test had been negative, but, as she lived with the lawyer’s brother who died with the disease and was from the risk group, the family decided to take her to São Paulo, where the coronavirus infection was then confirmed. .

“If I had stayed in Manaus, I would have died”, says Balieiro.

While the family struggled with the pain and treatment of the matriarch outside the state, Balieiro’s brother-in-law, also infected, had a worsening of the disease and could not find a place to hospitalize.

“At the funeral of my brother, who died on the 12th, only two people could enter. There’s a photo of me alone at the funeral that was taken by my brother-in-law. On that day, he already had the disease and didn’t know it. Maguila was 44 years old. “, account.

The brother-in-law was hospitalized for days in a UPA and, through a court decision, the family got him a place in a hospital. About a month later, he too died.

“There’s no way to say that he got over it. There are days that memories of my daughter come, another time it’s my brother, my uncle, after Maguila. Sometimes, I’m in the car and I get very bad and cry. Who hasn’t suffered this anguish , this pain has no idea. You look for the strength to revive and return to a normal life”, he says, crying.

Francisco Balieiro says that his anxiety is now about the vaccination of his eight-year-old daughter. “She was born premature, one kilo and one hundred grams. I don’t even know what I would be able to do to see my daughter vaccinated.”

The lawyer criticizes the government’s stance in relation to the pandemic and the vaccination of children.

“It is unbelievable that, after everything this country has been through, the President of the Republic continues to make fun of the pandemic. I am a Christian. There is no incompatibility between God and science, there is between God and this guy over there. [Bolsonaro]”, it says.

A year after the collapse of the health system in Manaus, civil servant José Augusto Silva da Costa, 66, lives with the sequelae that left muscle limitations in his legs and with the revolt for those who died for lack of bed and oxygen.

Costa survived the disease because he was transferred to another state when the Amazon collapsed. He remembers that he was hospitalized for two days in a wheelchair in the corridor of an emergency care unit in Manaus, with shortness of breath and weakness, until he was transferred to Natal.

“I saw two people die beside me [em Manaus]. I saw them struggling for air. I thought I was going to die too. I pray on my knees, thanking you for making it out of here. Many were not so lucky.”

“My feeling is of revolt, of anger. It is unacceptable to lack oxygen. It was here in Venezuela. Why didn’t they bring it before it was gone? These guys bringing chloroquine here. They played with the lives of the people. This governor was irresponsible and the president more still.”

On the other side of the counter, a front-line doctor, who asked not to be named, says he cries and wonders when he remembers the decisions he had to make with other professionals to choose who would run out of oxygen during refueling intervals. .

Patients they considered most likely to survive were privileged with oxygen when levels were critical. Thus, the first to die, when supplies were lacking, were those in the ICU, according to him. But the shortage also affected those who were unable to access an intensive bed, he adds.

Among other moments, he recalls that a technical manager threw herself on the floor and began to cry after the patients selected to be without oxygen, due to scarcity, died. He says he also remembers an old man who, already very ill and without oxygen, told him he was seeing Jesus.

For the doctor, unforgettable situations like these led many colleagues to fall ill in the period after the collapse of health in Manaus.

Glenda Nascimento de Freitas, nurse and director of UPA (Emergency Care Unit) José Rodrigues, recalls that the unit she manages has a capacity for 19 inpatients, but it had 56 on the day that oxygen was lacking.

“Just remembering it makes me cry. It was desperate. I didn’t sleep for four days. From the 14th to the 18th. I still have an anxiety crisis. We would run to get oxygen for two, three hours and then run again”, account.

She says that the terror started when, on the morning of the 14th, a unit in the Alvorada neighborhood accused the lack of oxygen and the lack of response from the company supplying the input. She did a calculation and realized that her unit’s would end at 7pm.

So she and the team began re-evaluating patients for discharges and transfers. At noon, however, the hospitals stopped receiving the transferred patients because they had the same problem as the UPA.

Late that morning, Freitas’s husband, who is not a state employee, went to a huge line at a company that sold single cylinders. Doctors from the unit made a crowdfunding and got the resource. His turn, however, did not arrive before 7pm.

On the 14th, according to the nurse, “a miracle” took place: a person — who to this day she doesn’t know who she is — stopped in front of the unit and donated enough oxygen until 9 pm. The donor had seen the appeal on social media.

In line at a company, they got oxygen until 2 am. And so the next four days passed, with intermittent supply of the input.

In one of the times when the oxygen was running out, they got 16 cylinders, but they needed a truck to bring them to the UPA. A patient’s brother overheard her commenting on the problem and offered his vehicle. His brother was intubated in the unit.

“He came in the truck driving as fast as he could, crying and praying aloud: ‘Lord, support my brother for a few more minutes’. I, next to me, couldn’t stand it and cried too. of those who survived”, he says.

“When missing [oxigênio], people died. Especially those who were intubated, 100% dependent on oxygen. The team would ambush [usar o ambu, reanimador manual], tried to calm down. Said the oxygen was coming. Some could control their minds. Others, unfortunately not. From the 14th to the 15th, we lost about 15 people”, he recalls.

On the 14th, the leaf published an article in which the White Martins company stated that the most viable solution was to bring oxygen from the company’s plant in Venezuela, due to the distance and logistics involved. Three days later, the government of Nicolás Maduro announced a donation.

The arrival, by road, in Manaus of the donation from the government of Venezuela, on January 20, gave the system a boost, but, according to data from the Covid CPI report, the instability lasted until February.